Susan Rice

2017 was a year of incredible change and tension in the world of the liberal media. Whether it was the departure of their beloved Barack Obama, the contentious White House press briefings, media failures, or journalists fired over sexual misconduct allegations, the liberal media are almost definitely looking forward to 2018. Just as I did with 2016, check out the top ten most-read NewsBusters blogs from 2017.

Beginning in mid-November, the international press noticed that a grisly practice had returned to Libya: slave auctions taking place monthly in at least nine locations, in territory controlled by the United Nations-backed Libyan Government of National Accord. No news coverage I have seen has reminded readers that the chain of events leading to this outrageous situation started with the toppling of the government of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, which could not have occurred without the indispensable support of then-President Barack Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

After a couple of whirlwind weeks of the media bashing President Trump on everything from how he “lectured” U.S. allies at the NATO meeting, to his son-in-law Jared Kushner allegedly looking for a Russian back channel, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos sought the opinion of Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice. During her appearance on This Week on Sunday, Stephanopoulos gave Rice free reign to smear the current administration, often teeing her up for it himself.

It’s no secret that many members of the press have been unhappy with the way President Donald Trump has usually dealt with the “mainstream media.” However, on Monday, April 24, New York Times White House Correspondent Glenn Thrush actually praised the way the administration has handled its daily press conferences.

It looks like former President Obama's national security adviser Susan Rice will get a reprieve. With all the hullabaloo from President Donald Trump's military action last week in Syria's ... do we call it Syria's civil war or a massacre? ... it now appears that Rice's mishandling of surveillance is going to subside from the headlines temporarily.

The truth-tellers in the media have bypassed another opportunity to call out the Obama Administration for telling bold-faced lies. The New York Times broke a story Sunday revealing that the former administration “knew” Syria’s president Bashir-al-Assad had more chemical weapons hidden, despite telling the American people that they had destroyed all of Assad’s chemical weapons. Yet the networks have ignored these reports, not giving any airtime since the first story broke.

In a gooey interview released on Monday, MSNBC host and NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell hilariously told Politico Magazine columnist and friend Susan Glasser that she was not a Hillary Clinton hack or a liberal journalist because “that isn’t my reputation” and claimed the Clinton campaign press “harass[ed] her...all summer long about the private server.”

As evidence that Donald Trump's presidential campaign, and then his transition team, were under surveillance by the Obama administration for political reasons continues to mount, the stubborn refusal by CNN's Don Lemon to acknowledge this reality is turning into a national joke. Thursday evening, Newsmax's Christopher Ruddy got so exasperated at Lemon's deep state of denial, that he asked: "Don, are you drinking Kool-Aid tonight?"

So how could the Washington Post Fact Checker, Glenn Kessler, possibly avoid awarding a bunch of Pinocchios on April 6 to Susan Rice for her recent flip-flop on the unmasking of Donald Trump campaign people? In a March 22 interview with Judy Woodruff, Rice denied any knowledge at all of this yet she later admitted to unmasking names in an MSNBC interview on April 4. Kessler acted all perplexed about the contradiction. He was so busy scratching his head over this that he somehow forgot all about the very obvious Pinocchios that should have been awarded while wondering Did Rice mislead on PBS?

The move-the-goalposts crowd now defending the Obama administration's pre- and post-election surveillance of Donald Trump and his associates continues to cling to the notion that it was all done in connection with possible Russian influence during the presidential election campaign and that nation's alleged subsequent attempts to influence the new administration during its transition. If that's the case, then why has Fox News reported at least twice in the past week that reports resulting from this surveillance often had "nothing to do with national security or an investigation into Russia’s interference in the U.S. election" (Friday, via the network's Adam Housley and Malia Zimmerman) and were "not related to Moscow" (Wednesday, via Catherine Herridge and Pamela K. Browne)?

As an intelligence surveillance scandal involving Donald Trump threatens to turn back on Susan Rice and the Obama White House, New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Matthew Rosenberg ran interference for the previous Democratic administration in Thursday’s edition with “Trump, Offering No Evidence, Suggests Rice Committed a Crime.” The text box: “A president’s attack on an ex-national security adviser is roundly rejected.” Newsbuster Curtis Houck caught the paper’s snarky headlines when the piece was first posted (and had its headline subsequently “improved” with that precious “offering no evidence” clause) on Wednesday, and the end result in print Thursday was equally in lock-step with Democratic talking points and a profound incuriosity about what Rice may have done.

Thursday morning on Good Morning America, the ABC News team were eager to bash Trump for his comment to the New York Times, stating he “thought” Susan Rice committed a crime in requesting the classified identities of Trump associates, while she was Obama’s National Security Advisor. Cecilia Vega centered her report on Trump’s claim instead of Rice’s actions, before George Stephanopoulos brought on analysts to continue criticizing Trump and defending Rice.

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